First of all MariaDB is a fork of MySQL, so of course it is a good alternative. However, the better approach would be, why did you switch to MariaDB versus continuing to use MySQL? How many others have switched to MariaDB and why?

logic_earth
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2013-05-24T09:49:40Z —
#2

Or to add, why continue with MySQL/MariaDB instead trying something new like PostgreSQL?

Michael_Morris1
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2013-05-24T11:08:31Z —
#3

Doesn't Maria vs. My belong in the database forum anyway?

cpradio
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2013-05-24T11:15:06Z —
#4

logic_earth said:

Or to add, why continue with MySQL/MariaDB instead trying something new like PostgreSQL?

Another good question. I actually still use MySQL from time to time, but in 90% of the projects I've worked, I've had to interact with an already existing data storage (be it a RDBMS or some other storage mechanism they utilize). Seriously I know a lot of people got upset when MySQL was bought by Oracle, but I really don't see that big of a difference (yet). I've only worked with PostgreSQL for 1 small project, it was fine (no complaints, but I haven't taken it on mainstream yet).

Michael_Morris said:

Doesn't Maria vs. My belong in the database forum anyway?

Off Topic:

I've moved it too General Web Development/Application Design, as I believe that could be a good fit (as there may be design reasons on why you choose one over another)

Lemon_Juice
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2013-05-24T15:56:53Z —
#5

cpradio said:

Seriously I know a lot of people got upset when MySQL was bought by Oracle, but I really don't see that big of a difference (yet).

Me, neither. Actually, from a user's point of view I must admit Oracle is doing a pretty good job with MySQL. Their 5.5 release was a big improvement in performance and they continue working on it. I wish they focused more on adding features but at least the project is not abandoned and I don't see any threat of it being withdrawn from the open source community.

wwb_99
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2013-05-24T17:30:46Z —
#6

logic_earth said:

Or to add, why continue with MySQL/MariaDB instead trying something new like PostgreSQL?

Seriously. Why ever bother with MySql when Postgres is better and just as FOSS if you are into that sort of thing.

In 2013, the question I usually ask myself when starting a project is "how can I avoid SQL entirely." Personally I'm partial to RavenDb but that is pretty .NET specific. Mongo could be an interesting choice, it seems like 10gen is growing up and actually persisting data effectively now.

Michael_Morris1
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2013-05-24T18:11:57Z —
#7

wwb_99 said:

Seriously. Why ever bother with MySql when Postgres is better and just as FOSS if you are into that sort of thing.

In 2013, the question I usually ask myself when starting a project is "how can I avoid SQL entirely." Personally I'm partial to RavenDb but that is pretty .NET specific. Mongo could be an interesting choice, it seems like 10gen is growing up and actually persisting data effectively now.

To use NoSQL is to go back to 1970 and reinvent the SQL wheel. There are corner case uses for Mongo, Raven and its kindred, but 99% of the websites out there don't fall into those corners. Once you get into serious data analysis NoSQL shows it's SEVERE limitations.

wwb_99
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2013-05-24T18:52:21Z —
#8

90%? Really? I would argue, especially for content sites, that it is the other way around -- the data is fundamentally documents NOT rows of sales data for data processing. Which is where one got SQL in the first place. Moreover, from a development perspective it is astounding how nice it is when you don't have to jump through the hoops of schema versioning and maintenance. Or at least I find it liberating.

Insofar as analysis goes, I think the nosql style solutions are winning the wars, at least for the bigger data problems. I will admit you need quasi-developers to get that done though, the typical BI toolchain doesn't really speak well to Hadoop. Yet.

force
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2013-05-24T22:56:44Z —
#9

cpradio said:

Since I'm not seeing a question here, let's turn it into one.

First of all MariaDB is a fork of MySQL, so of course it is a good alternative. However, the better approach would be, why did you switch to MariaDB versus continuing to use MySQL? How many others have switched to MariaDB and why?

From everything I've read about MariaDB, its supposed to be a drop-in replacement.

Or to add, why continue with MySQL/MariaDB instead trying something new like PostgreSQL?

I used PostgreSQL several years ago, and while I think it's a very good DB engine and doesn't take a lot of the sloppy shortcuts that MySQL does, unfortunately, it simply hasn't caught on. MySQL just happened to come out at exactly the right time, an no other database has been able to gain a foothold like it did.

Because of MySQL's popularity, it means is that a lot of webapps are specifically designed for the LAMP/WAMP stack, and there are no considerations taken for running on alternate databases. PostgreSQL is not a drop-in replacement for MySQL. (and yes, I've been guilty of also designing for the LAMP/WAMP stack and not including support for other databases...the stack simply is just deeply entrenched in web development and server hosting environments).

cpradio
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2013-05-25T11:20:39Z —
#10

Force_Flow said:

From everything I've read about MariaDB, its supposed to be a drop-in replacement.

Yikes! Guess, I somehow missed all that action in my RSS feeds... I knew Oracle isn't the most forth coming company but neither was Sun for that matter. So some of that may have existed on some level when Sun was in control (it is just worse now?).

Thanks for the update. That definitely put a new light on things.

force
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2013-05-25T21:53:18Z —
#11

cpradio said:

Yikes! Guess, I somehow missed all that action in my RSS feeds... I knew Oracle isn't the most forth coming company but neither was Sun for that matter. So some of that may have existed on some level when Sun was in control (it is just worse now?).

Thanks for the update. That definitely put a new light on things.

Basically, many of the free and open source projects that Oracle took over have been turning sour one after another because of Oracle instituting corporate control over the projects. I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop on VirtualBox--another one of Oracle's big acquisitions (however, this one was never 100% open source, so it will probably receive slightly different treatment)

sg707
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2013-05-30T21:18:44Z —
#12

Honestly, I don't mind using MySQL as long as it's less then 1 million records. I've heard that performance become really bad after certain number of rows per table but what's the chance this will happen in YOUR app. I'm guessing it's 0.1%. If not, any RDBMS is fine in my opinion.

wwb_99
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2013-06-01T18:57:48Z —
#13

Force_Flow said:

Basically, many of the free and open source projects that Oracle took over have been turning sour one after another because of Oracle instituting corporate control over the projects. I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop on VirtualBox--another one of Oracle's big acquisitions (however, this one was never 100% open source, so it will probably receive slightly different treatment)

Yeah, me too. Though they picked up virtualbox to help sell Oracle -- which is so nightmarish to install that having a virtual test image makes sense and it is oracle so you might as well own the virtualization stack.

That said you'll notice major projects with dependencies on VirtualBox (ie Vagrant) are rapidly building to work with other virtualization environments.

sg707
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2013-06-05T14:31:14Z —
#14

Force_Flow said:

Basically, many of the free and open source projects that Oracle took over have been turning sour one after another because of Oracle instituting corporate control over the projects. I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop on VirtualBox--another one of Oracle's big acquisitions (however, this one was never 100% open source, so it will probably receive slightly different treatment)

Java is also owned by Oracle as well. Thankfully JDK looks pretty good and seem to have good intention... I believe original JDK devs are still there. But, Oracle's implementation of their OWN standard is pretty horrific... also, they try to lock you into using this horrible JDeveloper IDE instead of Eclipse which is used about 99% of the Java community. Wish Sun was still around...

force
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2013-06-05T22:48:15Z —
#15

sg707 said:

Java is also owned by Oracle as well. Thankfully JDK looks pretty good and seem to have good intention... I believe original JDK devs are still there. But, Oracle's implementation of their OWN standard is pretty horrific... also, they try to lock you into using this horrible JDeveloper IDE instead of Eclipse which is used about 99% of the Java community. Wish Sun was still around...

Keep in mind that Java is wrought with security holes--this year has been particularly bad.